Promethean Legacy
by Ieldra2
Summary: Miranda is not just an interesting character. She is a symbol. This story is about how she became what she is and the role she might play in the bigger picture of things. The stage is set when Miranda is 16, and makes a discovery that will change her life
1. Down the Needle

_A/N: This fanfic will eventually cover the events between Miranda's discovery of several unpleasant secrets about herself and her father and the time when she's passed the tests to become a Cerberus operative. It will shed some light on her__ becoming what she is, her loyalty to Cerberus and the three-way relationship between her, the Illusive Man and her father. I hope I'll be able to put up a chapter every one or two weeks. Thanks to fongiel24 for beta-reading and for everyone on Bioware Social's Miranda fan thread for the many interesting discussions that made this story possible.  
Addendum: I've been told my paragraphs are too long. I'm trying to get better, but sometimes it isn't possible. Using 1/2 or 3/4 screen width for the text (see the buttons up right) makes it easier to read. _

**Promethean Legacy **

A Mass Effect fan fiction

Chapter 1: Down the Needle

In the corporate world of the 22nd century, paranoia was an occupational hazard. Where high-resolution optics could scan a holoscreen from orbit and surveillance microphones eavesdrop on conversations through layers of bulletproof glass, corporate headquarters had resembled fortresses for several decades. Invisible, but equally formidable anti-hacking countermeasures equaled military electronic warfare suites in complexity. The needle-thin skyscraper housing the headquarters of Consolidated Aerospace and Engineering, sited in a generous open park landscape on the Tasmanian west coast, was no exception. If anything, the security needs of Earth's largest defense contractor and the personality of its CEO and majority owner combined to take corporate paranoia to a new level. Access to and from the building was obsessively controlled, and the automated security was rumored to be lethal, in a clear violation of law which limited VI-controlled devices to non-lethal weaponry. For some reason, no public prosecutor had ever bothered to order an investigation.

As if to provide vindication, sweeps of the park regularly revealed the signatures of millions of nano-machines, members of "hostile" surveillance swarms carried in by convenient winds to capture mostly insignificant pieces of information – the most obvious intruders from the perspective of the defenders in the towers, and therefore mostly ignored. Further away, investigative media reporters looking for hints of infamous weapons deals, some of them doubling as spies for CAE's competition, occupied places on cliffs and hills, huddled in thick coats to protect them from the biting wind, or on boats on seemingly random courses along the rocky coastline. With the tower as hermetically sealed as it was, these too had rarely anything dramatic to report to their employers or masters. Those lucky enough to be assigned to boats preferred to regard their duties as an extended vacation, lounging lazily in the warmth of their boats' cabins and leaving the real work to automated camera control systems.

Which is why, when the dramatic suddenly intruded on the quiet of this winter morning in the year 2166 and the few spy cameras trained on the executive level caught a light reflection on the walls of the tower, their software didn't recognize its significance and they continued their routine sweep as if nothing had happened. Only the unpredictability of the organic mind, its whims led by intuition or luck, made a single human spy observe the event.

A flash of blue light behind a window almost blinded the spy through his binoculars. A crack appeared in the window. His directional microphone caught the muted sound of a gunshot, the characteristic cracking report of a mass driver gun. Another blue flash and a circular area of the window shattered into a million tiny shards. A figure appeared. Retreating towards the jagged opening, it fired another burst of bullets against unseen opponents. The figure carried – no, wore a small backpack over a dark, close-fitting outfit. When it jumped, the spy was not surprised.

The figure began its descent, long, dark hair streaming upwards in the wind. Unprofessional, the spy thought. Then he frowned. The parachute should've opened by now. Two more seconds. Nothing happened. The figure disappeared behind a hill blocking the view of the lower levels.

**-0O0-**

_Fourteen__ hours earlier…._

The setting midwinter sun seemed huge on the horizon as it showered the piers and sheds of CAE's marina with an otherworldly light, and painted a golden road on the lazy swell of the ocean, as if to seduce its boats away from their moorings into an unknown mythic west. The light played on the tower's mirrored surface, shadows following it upwards as the sun continued its way down.

Two kilometers above ground, on CAE Tower's executive level, a pair of blue-grey eyes allowed itself to be distracted for a moment. A rare smile transformed Miranda's face as she reflected that four of five requirements for a perfect moment were fulfilled: no company, it was quiet, there was a stunning view, and she was on her way to do something forbidden. The holoscreen on her desk showed the layout of the tower in a detail any spy would envy, but the image only confirmed that she didn't need it. These rooms had been her home for as long as she could recall, and this tower her world. She suspected she knew it better than anyone, with the exception of a few areas she wasn't allowed in.

She turned away from the window. Perfect moments didn't exist. The fifth requirement, or rather the first, was something she rarely admitted to herself. The last time she had screamed "I wish you were dead!" at her father no one had taken her seriously, but he had remarked in his typical offhand manner that people who couldn't control themselves ended up in mental hospitals or jails. So she had learned control. But the wish remained. As did the roiling mixture of fear and hate that she could feel eating her guts at times when she thought of him.

Her father ruled CAE with an iron hand, but the way he ran her life made that hand look soft. For the first fourteen years of her life she'd wanted nothing more than to please him, longing for acknowledgment, for any sign of the love she was told there was between them. But all she ever got was a distant nod – and the next task. And when she failed, no matter if it was her fault or not, no matter if her task was so hard she could only expect to fail, the air around him seemed to turn to ice, and his words inflicted a pain sharper than any slap could. He had hit her only once – when she started to cry when facing his icy disapproval. Control again. It was a pattern, she'd learned since then; an obsession. Even his punishments were controlled, in accordance with recommendations from the psychologists he employed for her education. She'd never cried in his presence again. If this was love, then love was a lie.

She pushed the memory of that time away, determined to take as much fun as she could from her sixteenth birthday, limited as the opportunities were. She wasn't allowed to see Niket, and the presents, along with anything else she got without asking for it, were always work-related, calculated to further her efficiency and her integration into her father's world. As were these, she thought with distaste as she opened her walk-in closet and looked upon a row of dark business suits. Every two months she would be presented with a new custom-tailored set, to account for her growth as she was told. She hated the things. For her, they were symbols of submission. Even so, practicality demanded she put one on. A bit of fashionable eccentricity in clothing was one of the few freedoms her father allowed her, and she used to take every advantage of it. Appearing in a business suit and putting her hair up in a bun would go a long way in turning her into a nondescript paper-pusher. There wasn't much she could do about her easily recognizable face, but many of CAEs employees knew it only from the media. The media loved to cook up stories about her. There were only a handful of authorized photographs, but that only intensified the curiosity. The mysterious beauty hidden away in the tower of a notorious defense tycoon, it sounded like a modern Rapunzel. As usual, the extranet wallowed in the tasteless instead, describing in lurid detail the decadent parties she was rumored to throw in her penthouse on the five-hundredth floor. If only they knew how much of a prison it was.

Quickly she took off the tea dress she had spent her afternoon in. She took one of the grey suits out and closed the closet, taking the opportunity to examine her body in the mirror on its outer surface. She envied girls with smaller chests. The damn things always got in the way. But all things considered, her body was surprisingly athletic for an executive-in-training. By "executive order", she was expected to always keep at peak health, but she didn't mind. She had opted for martial arts and bribed one of the security guards to teach her the less formal styles used by the real professionals. No doubt he had thought of asking for more than money, but at CAE HQ, it was rumored a dalliance with the boss's daughter was bad for your health.

She put on the suit and picked up her omnitool. With a fluid movement built from long familiarity, she fastened it to her left arm and activated it. Rows of text and cryptic symbols appeared on its holoscreen as she initiated the systems check. Adapting this standard model to something more suited to a spy had been a lot of work. Four hours of sleep for eight months would exact a heavy price in health to pay for secrecy from any other human, but it had been no problem for her, another unexpected gift of her engineered genes, she assumed. And it enabled her to do things she liked, in satisfying defiance of her packed schedule during the day. With all the corporate secrets she had unearthed with its help, she'd have been able to make millions of credits by selling it to CAE's competitors, but she wasn't after money. A thousand people could live in decadent comfort for the rest of their lives from the interest of her father's fortune alone. She'd never understood why he wanted more. Instead, she was consumed by a burning need to know what others would hide. First and foremost, what her father would hide. Once, he had ruled her by his knowledge of her innermost thoughts, her secrets, which she had told him in childish naiveté. This was her way to fight back. Knowledge was her weapon.

Finishing the systems check, she looked around her room and after a moment of hesitation, pulled a pistol out of a drawer. She wasn't exactly competent with guns, and if she needed to use it, the shit would've hit the fan in a way that couldn't likely be hidden, but better to be prepared. Ironically, it was one of CAE's own new models, the first pistol-sized mass driver gun made on Earth. Her fingers flitted over the omnitool, then brushed the touchpad to open the doors. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the doors. Nothing happened. Her omnitool, monitoring the security, could detect no silent alarm. By stepping into the corridor armed, she had passed the first test.

The executive level was mostly abandoned at this time, which suited her fine. As the CEO's designated heir, her clearance topped most others' she would encounter, excepting only the security and employees in certain top-secret areas. Even so, she didn't care to be monitored or seen. The risk of having to share the elevator could be minimized by analyzing the work schedules, but she had no floor plans or schedules of the biolab section. Once there, she'd have to rely on stealth, another valuable skill she had acquired almost without trying. But first, she had to pass the elevator's security zone. As the main access point to the executive level, its security wasn't lethal – a rare false-positive could trigger a fatal accident – but it was full of sophisticated scanners. Identity codes, unauthorized weapons, unusual substances or energy signatures, everything was scanned for with multiple redundancies. Again, her pistol triggered no alarm. She had an executive override code that would send her directly down to the biolabs, but it would attract attention. Instead she entered the security guards' code she had stolen from their VI, hitting the touchpad for sublevel 12 only after the code was acknowledged. The door closed, and with the familiar sensation of vertigo, the elevator started its way down.

The tower's interior design was old-fashioned for a modern corporate HQ. There were endless corridors with personal offices instead of the stereotypical "sea of cubicles", too much of CAE's work being strictly compartmentalized for security. Also, labs were integrated in the floor plan in a way which went against half a dozen occupational safety laws, considering the kind of research undertaken there. But nobody ever complained. The elevator passed the legal department. Miranda had studied there for half a year, discovering she didn't like it there but had a knack for finding legal loopholes. She thought about her birthday again. One year less to her majority, a gift she appreciated more than anything her father would ever give her. Two more years, and he would have no legal hold on her any more. She doubted he would simply let her go her own way. But at least the law would be on her side, and she could use that as a lever. If he wanted her as his heir, he couldn't have her declared insane and lock her away, could he?

So she had to work at her duties as if there were nothing else. Her competence was her power base. She had to be good enough for him, and keep up the appearance of the dutiful daughter in spite of the truth. The truth was it was all an act these days. She learned and she worked – but for herself. She liked to learn, and deciphering complex patterns came easily to her. She also liked acting. The first time she had successfully fooled her father had been exhilarating, like an unexpected gift of a hitherto cruel fate. Now she could even fool the psychologists. She could take two more years of this. Nobody ever knew what she felt anymore. Nobody would ever know again.

The thought was like a mantra, bringing with it an inner calm and detachment that had been faked only a moment before. Emotions receded into insignificance, her heartbeat slowed down as the elevator did. Relieved that she'd encountered no one on her way down, she opened a compartment in her omnitool, pulled a dull grey circlet out and fastened it carefully on her head. A push of a hidden button, and a one-eye visor rotated out. Then she dimmed the omnitool's output. From now on, the visor would project any data directly onto her retina. With a barely perceptible jolt, the elevator stopped. Miranda allowed herself another smile. She knew she was good at this, and she was where she wanted to be: alone, and on her way to another's secrets.


	2. Into the Dark

Chapter 2: Into the Dark

Miranda didn't expect to meet anyone on the biolabs level. Even so, as the elevator door opened, she strode out as if she belonged there. She found herself in a corridor going off to the left and right, featuring nondescript ivory-colored walls and dimmed lights. The elevator door was the only door on this side, opposite there was a niche with a reception desk and a surveillance camera. It was the same model used everywhere else and her omnitool had hacked it within milliseconds, routing all the camera's input to itself to be manipulated before relaying it to the VI for analysis. A row of office windows closed off with blinds and interspersed with labeled doors went off to the left and right of the niche for fifteen meters or so, after which the corridors turned away in a right angle as if to encircle the office section. She couldn't hear any voices. The air was cool and dry and carried a hint of organic solvents, as if the cleaning bots had been through a short time ago. Good. Apparently it was as she expected and everyone had already quit for the day.

Above the reception desk a signboard showed a list of names and functions. She memorized the room numbers of the department manager's office – one G. P. Chang, MD, DSc. – and the women's restroom. After scanning the labels at the nearest doors, she turned left and walked briskly down the corridor. The floor was covered with a steel-blue carpet, so moving silently was easy. Turning right at the end, she stopped at the second door, labeled unmistakably as the women's restroom. Use of all doors was logged during off-work hours, which she couldn't avoid, but a virus she'd inserted into the security software would erase all log entries created by her fake ID.

She entered the restroom. There were three stalls. She stepped into the one at the back, sat down on the closed lid and pulled up her feet. Microscopic reconnaissance drones created by her omnitool would map the area before she continued, but it would take some time. She disliked waiting. There was too much time to think; or to brood, if she was honest with herself. She wished Niket were here to distract her. Unbidden, his image popped up in her mind. Nice brown eyes and an attractive straight nose in a well-proportioned face, and light brown skin. His brown hair was never neat. Neither was his clothing, and he had no sense of style. Average, he looked, not like her in the least. But he was unafraid to make jokes about their respective parents, and like her, he loved boating and swimming. They'd been friends for ten years.

Niket's mother ran CAE's marina. It was the kind of thankless job where you only got noticed when you made a mistake. The pay was correspondingly low. Insultingly low, Miranda had said when Niket told her. Niket had implored her not to mention them to her father. She had been ten at the time, but already known if she told her father what she thought he'd have Niket's mother fired. But three years later she'd learned to manipulate the HR department's records and gave her a little upgrade. Nothing spectacular, but it should make paying off her debts noticeably easier. She'd never told anyone and had no idea if Niket suspected. He'd never brought it up.

In time, their friendship had acquired an added dimension. It wasn't exactly love, or so she thought. There had been a few pleasurable experiments, nothing more. Well, they had been _very_ pleasurable. These days, on the rare occasions when their schedules permitted and they ventured out on one of the motor-boats, or on one of those old-fashioned wooden sloops the head of the legal division collected, there was always a tension in the air between them, a hint of what they'd shared and would possibly share again. It was almost impossible to escape observation, though. The security detail was supposed to stay at range, but she knew they had high-resolution infrared optics. In addition, there were her father's satellites to consider. Talk was another matter – bugs were easily detected and microphones easily fooled for someone with her skills. So circumstances had conspired to keep them at "just friends" with a little added excitement now and then – as if there was anything "just" about having someone she could trust. They'd laughed together and comforted each other, and shared each other's secrets. She didn't know how he felt about it all – they both weren't good at expressing emotions – but for her, sharing her secrets, telling him what she'd done, and why, and sharing her dreams with him, had created a bond that could stretch to the stars and it wouldn't break.

She was startled out of her reverie by several voices approaching. Annoyed by having almost slipped off her seat while daydreaming, to say nothing of daydreaming in the first place, she hurriedly checked herself and the stall she was hiding in. Good. There was nothing on the floor to detect by a casual glance. She also didn't smell. She kept herself meticulously clean and never used perfume if she could avoid it. It wasn't long before the restroom door opened, and someone stepped in, announcing her – probably her – presence with the clacking sound of hard-soled shoes on tiles. Miranda heard the last words of a sentence, spoken from the corridor in a man's voice.

"...in my office. End of the corridor, then left. It's room 007."

"See you in a moment."

The woman stopped walking. There was a scratching noise, then an almost inaudible click. Miranda longed to check her drones but she didn't dare move. She almost didn't dare breathe. In this silence, considering the tiled walls would amplify all noise, a drop of sweat falling to the floor would be almost as obvious as a gunshot. She couldn't even shift on her seat. The tension only let up after the woman had activated a tap and water started running. This went on for about a minute, then the water stopped, there was another click, and the woman stepped out into the corridor again. Risking only shallow breaths, Miranda waited for another two minutes before she checked her omnitool. The drones were out of contact, still busy with their task of mapping the area, but the omnitool had recorded the voices. A crosscheck of the voice imprints with CAE's HR database told her the man was Chang, but there was no matching record for the woman. Not CAE, then. There had been two more people accompanying Chang but the sound of their steps wasn't enough for identification. So much for her plans to search Chang's office. She could only hope their meeting would be short.

She had another few minutes to wait until her drones would report back, so there was a little time left to be annoyed with herself. _Why the hell didn't I monitor the fucking camera,_ she berated herself_._ This daydreaming wasn't like her. It was like sleeping on the job, and she _never_ did that. She shouldn't be thinking of Niket in here, at this time, but he had a habit of popping up in her mind at the strangest times. Trusting him was stupid, really. Trusting anyone was stupid. But never trusting anyone, you couldn't live that way, could you? _Damn it, how could you ever know?_

Her omnitool projected a green dot into her eye, begging for her attention. She called up the floor plan it had constructed from the drones' data. The layout followed a standard research level template: a number of offices in the front, encircled by corridors. Labs in the back, engineering, storerooms and other facilities placed for easy access depending on their purpose. There were two more surveillance cameras over the doors to the lab section. Her omnitool would be able to deal with them without her input. Chang's office was located in the back of the office section, far out of sight of the restroom door. She could walk away with no one the wiser if she wanted, or wait the meeting out and proceed with her original plan. But her curiosity wouldn't let her. She had to know what they were talking about. A woman not in CAE's employment in the biolabs during off-work hours, that was unusual.

She needed a plan. Her drones were small enough to be invisible to anything but a bug sweep, but to keep contact with them they had to stay in sight. Their signals were too weak to go through walls, and amplifying them would trigger the security. Chang's office had two large windows to adjacent corridors, but the microphones she'd need to eavesdrop through them were specialized equipment beyond the current programming of her omnitool to manufacture. Listening at the door would be too risky, even assuming she could hear anything through the thick layer of plastic. But according to the floor plan she could get to one of the windows without being seen from within. If she could get a drone into the room, maybe she'd be able to catch its signals through the window.

Mentally cursing herself for not being prepared _quite enough_, she made a note to upgrade her omnitool's manufacturing unit, ordered her drones to scout the different ways to Chang's office, and stepped out of the restroom. Stepping more carefully now, her soft-soled shoes made no noise at all on the carpeted floor. Selecting a path from the presented options, she walked down the corridor, stepped through a pair of connected offices and out into another corridor. She was almost at the next corner when a drone pinged a warning.

Quickly she stepped through the next door into yet another office – how much office space did they need for this research wing? – and closed the door behind her. Hearing nothing, she fastened a relay chip to the office's window. Her drone sent an image of a figure standing in front of Chang's office. And it wasn't just anyone. Zoltan Markovic, one of her father's bodyguards. If he was here, then so was her father. _Damn you_, she thought as she felt the familiar fear creeping up on her. _You don't know me anymore_... She looked down at her trembling hands. If she'd carried a pistol, she'd have dropped it. Scowling, she forced herself to breathe slowly and let her heartbeat calm down. Accept your fear, her combat trainer had taught her when he'd introduced her to knives. Fear can save your life, but don't let it control you. Her father wasn't a god, however much he wanted to make himself one. Ever since she'd killed the men who'd abducted her and fought her way out of imprisonment, he didn't have absolute power over her anymore. But if he surprised her, he could still get through her defenses by his mere presence. It was almost a minute before she could continue.

The stakes had risen dramatically. Only the most important projects got her father's personal attention. And from now on, she absolutely couldn't afford to be seen. Deception was not an option anymore. Markovic would recognize her immediately, and he knew she wasn't supposed to be here. There was no way left to get to the window of Chang's office, but she'd used drone relays before. She sent one drone down to the office door and another crawling up to the window, while she looked for a spot to hide from a casual glance into this office. Having to use an improvised hiding place didn't sit well with her – she liked to plan everything in detail – but she'd known this would be a trip into the unknown. The first drone lost contact as it made its way under the door. It shouldn't be more than a few seconds now.

"...you're telling me there's sixteen years between them, and they're identical?" The woman's voice was low-pitched and smooth. Likely she could sound very pleasant, but at the moment she was clearly annoyed. "Sixteen years of research and you've not a single improvement to show for it?"

"There's only so much you can do with genes", Chang's voice replied. "Between the limitations of the human genome and the restrictive parameters I'd been given, there wasn't anything more we could do. Speeding up cognitive functions even more carries a risk of autism, physical enhancement would make her look like a body builder as soon as she started any serious physical regimen. It's much the same with all the other enhancements: either we're at the limit of the 100% human template – well, at least of the attractive human template – or you can't code for it in the first place. Like the immune system. We made it more adaptable starting with Miranda, but there's really no way at all to account for unknown threats. The body has to learn these things."

"Spare me biology 101, I know that part just as well as you," the woman replied. "That the template would prove so limited is an unexpected and very unfortunate surprise. What about the lifespan?"

"I'm glad to say we were more successful there. The net gains aren't significant compared to the previous version yet, but the new viral messengers are very efficient. The cells show increased telomerase activity without transmuting into cancer cells. We've also improved mutation prevention and replacement of dead neurons. The mechanisms haven't made it into the genes – see file XI for details – but we're working on that. To code for..."

Miranda couldn't believe her ears. They were talking about _her_. She knew she was genetically enhanced. That's why she learned faster, needed less sleep and less training for physical skills involving hand/eye coordination. Presumably she also had a longer lifespan than the average human. She'd been after the details of what exactly they'd done and how for a long time. She'd studied biochemistry and genetics, analyzed her own cells, but of course with neither the original material nor any documentation, there was no chance of deciphering anything. But now, discovery of the scientific background of her engineered genes paled to insignificance before something else: 'They' were identical. Who was the other one? She was quite aware that being biologically related to someone didn't count for much in real life. But the thought of a sister, even more, an identical twin sister – she couldn't help being curious. She concentrated on the meeting again. Her omnitool would record everything, but she had to hear for herself.

The woman was speaking.

"...the procedure is considerably less drastic without any loss in efficiency. There's less stress on the body, so the operations can be moved forward. Her food will have to be enriched with eezo for six years, but the body will build up the nodules naturally once their cores are implanted. Which means she'll likely be a significantly stronger biotic than her predecessor."

There was a short pause.

"Very impressive, Ms. Kavanagh," said Chang. "Since you don't mention it, I gather you haven't been successful at coding for biotics. Not that we have..."

"I'm afraid you got that right. We've tried to encode asari functions with human DNA, but it didn't work out. Natural eezo fixation is tricky, and since eezo doesn't naturally exist on Earth, we're completely in the unknown here. As if that wasn't enough, it turned out there are too many other functions tied to asari biotics, the reproductive ones being the most problematic. The resulting organisms would be distinctively non-human. The details are included in this documentation. You can study the details later, but I recommend a look at pages 12 and 13."

Another pause. There was a clank; then the sound of a chair being moved. Miranda would have appreciated a 'less drastic' procedure at the time. There had been several weeks of extremely painful side effects, and of course they hadn't told her what they were doing at the time. Good that her sister wouldn't have to undergo the same torture. She smiled self-deprecatingly. Here they were, the answers about her origin she'd been looking for for two years. Strange how they'd been eclipsed by an inconclusive hint of a sister. Hopefully there would be more details about her.

"I see you're still planning to use this...distasteful setup," said Kavanagh, noticeably disgusted by something she'd read. "We want healthy humans, physically and mentally. This will do nothing to further that."

"They'll never know. There was no damage done." That was her father. He always sounded unconcerned. "Your boss would be the first to agree we can't be squeamish about our methods."

"Maybe," answered Kavanagh. "But he knows what I think of it, and I'm still here. I suggest you use some of the money you're pouring into this project to find an alternative. This is completely unacceptable for standardized high-level biotics training. Do your psychologists know about this? They could tell you about the possible disasters you risk."

"As for not finding out", Kavanagh continued. "The twins found out, didn't they? And that's the reason why they've vanished from the face of the Earth."

There were a few moments of complete silence. Apparently Kavanagh had surprised everyone. Miranda's thoughts raced. First a sister, now another pair of twins – what were they doing here? Did she have more sisters or was she part of a bigger experiment? How long has this been going on? How many children had her father made as secret projects? And where were they now? She needed time to think it all over, but the meeting continued inexorably.

"How did you find out about that?" Her father's voice had that careful tone indicating his mind was working in overdrive. _Kavanagh had made a mistake_, Miranda thought. She shouldn't have triggered his paranoia.

"We're not amateurs, Mr. De Morgan." Kavanagh's voice was still low and smooth, but it carried the hint of a threat. "We also haven't forgotten about our agreement. We share our research with you, we give you the improvements in our surgical procedures. In return, we get access to your rejects. You haven't been exactly forthcoming with your part. Now where are the twins? That we haven't been able to find them tells me you're quite aware of who you're hiding them from."

_Nice try_, Miranda thought. But you couldn't intimidate her father. He was a good businessman and could be very diplomatic, even generous if it suited him, but in his personal projects and interests, what he wanted more than anything else was exclusivity. And it couldn't get much more personal than this.

"_You're the first of a new dynasty."_ Her father's voice resounded in her head. _"A dynasty of superior humans, fit to rule over those with lesser ability. I've given you the best genes human science can make, and your children will inherit them, but you also have a duty to make the most of them. I can't do that for you. That's why I push you so hard. Don't think I'm not aware of it. It's all for a purpose. If you're not the best, it's not only you who'll have failed. I'll have failed as well."_

Of course he had taken for granted she wanted to be some kind of queen legitimized by superior genes. He didn't even notice how crazy that sounded. He'd made genetics his religion, and just like any other religion, he twisted the facts to make his obsession look superior to others. To keep his dynasty exclusive, he'd try to keep all its genetic material away from everyone else, never realizing this was even crazier than the idea of the dynasty in the first place – people left their DNA everywhere. You just had to pick it up and clone it. But it didn't matter. Whatever organization Kavanagh represented, they wouldn't get what they wanted.

"It's none of your concern." Her father replied – Miranda could've told Kavanagh his exact words beforehand. "They're dysfunctional; too dysfunctional even for you".

"Let us be the judge of that. If you won't do your part, I'll have to recommend to my boss that we terminate our co-operation."

"You're rather cocky for one of the Illusive Man's lackeys. Do you even know how much of your organization I fund?" Apparently, Kavanagh had hit home. Her father wasn't usually so crude.

"No", Kavanagh continued unperturbed. "But neither do you. And don't try to change the subject. Your rejects are good enough for us. We don't have your….strict requirements." There was heavy sarcasm is her voice now. "We're pushing genetics and training to their limits, but trust in our cause to engender loyalty."

_She might as well have said 'we don't have your control issues' outright_, thought Miranda. Who was this woman who dared to speak to her father this way, and who was her boss, this 'Illusive Man'? She recalled the moniker having come up in the news a few years ago, but it hadn't surfaced again. The way she spoke, Kavanagh's organization must be powerful. She'd mentioned a cause, so it was probably not a business, but she couldn't think of a political organization with both the inclination and the power for this kind of secret co-operation. Terra Firma would support it, but they were a disorganized group of nut-jobs with no idea of the real complexity of anything.

"This won't get us anywhere," she heard her father say. "I propose you set up a link to the Illusive Man after we're finished here, and I'll talk this over with him. Let's get on with this review. I believe you were criticizing our trigger mechanism."

"As you wish, but that won't change anything," replied Kavanagh. "I don't know why we're continuing this charade. You're obviously not prepared to honor our agreement, or take any of our recommendations under advisement."

"You think it was easy to see my daughter being manhandled by these…animals?" Her father growled, clearly at the limit of his precious control. "Think again. The results, however, have been worth it, and they got what they deserved. I believe Dr. Chang has brought the relevant documentation. I suggest you check it before you question our methods further."

"I have Miranda's files here," said Chang. "Our simulations show it is very likely there isn't an alternative solution of equal effectiveness. The very attributes that make it so distasteful to you make it a very effective trigger. This documentation includes a full recording of the manifestation, if you want to have a look. It's a rather impressive display, if I may say so on her behalf."

"I'm here for a review. Let's see it," said Kavanagh.

As soon as her father said 'trigger mechanism', something in Miranda's brain made the connection, and she went rigid with shock. For a few seconds she refused to consider the incredible truth, but then her father confirmed it. _It was a setup_, an inexplicably cool and dry voice in her head put it into clear words, even as she reflected on how much like her father this was, this subtle emphasis on '_my_ daughter', as if he didn't care overmuch about what happened to anyone else's daughters. Then the world went cold. A shudder went down her spine, sending its cold fingers into her insides and encasing them in a shell of ice. She retreated from the universe, caught in a memory. 'It', that was two years back, when her most destructive biotic power had manifested for the first time, a scene she recalled in every insignificant little detail...

_**-O0O-**_

_She awoke to blackness. Some kind of hood was over her head, and she was lying on a __smooth plastic surface. She tried to sit up and banged her head on something flat. Muffled voices answered from somewhere. Apparently she was in a box, with her hands and feet, even her fingers bound. Unable to move her fingers or hands, she couldn't use her telekinetic powers. She smelled something and fell unconscious again._

_Another awakening. She was sitting on a chair and bound to it. Someone pulled the hood from her head. Two human figures stood in front of her, their faces hidden by grotesque-faced carnival masks. One of the masks had a long, crooked and pointed nose, the other a painted mouth full of grinning teeth the size and shape of piano keys. Long Nose was fiddling with a camera standing on a tripod, its lens pointed at her. A male voice came from behind the nose, saying "cheeeese", mockingly. Both laughed. Big Grin was also a man. They let the camera run for some time. Somehow, her muddled brain connected some of the facts. An abduction; they wanted something from her father, probably money. Thus, the camera. Then one of the men forced a breathing mask on her face. Nothing after that until..._

_...the last awakening. She was stripped down to her underwear and lying on a bed, chained to its metal frame, in a room with walls of concrete painted a light brown. Her fingers were bound with bandages and wires. There was a single door of grey metal, with a small window at eye level. A small table stood beside the doorframe, with a bottle and a glass standing on it. The camera on its tripod was set up in one corner, its lens to the wall. There was no sign of the chair. Up in the corner near the bed, there was a fan blowing air in. The air was warm and smelled stale. The mattress she was lying on smelled musty, as if it had not been cleaned in a while. The bed was standing on a worn grey carpet, the flooring under it made of synthetic dark green tiles. Most of them were cracked. She wasn't hungry._

_The two men came in, still wearing their masks and laughing. Long Nose said her father would get his precious flower back, but they'd give her a gift so she'd always remember them. Big Grin made a crude joke using the word "flower", continued there'd be no way to avoid it, so she might as well enjoy it. Long Nose pulled the camera over. _

_She knew what would be coming. __She told herself it would not matter, but she knew it was a lie. The rape would be bad enough, she thought, but even worse would be the memory. They could make her remember, always. They'd destroy a precious dream she'd nursed for a year or two, a dream she'd thought to share with Niket, perhaps. If these men had their way, it would be defiled. Whenever she'd even think of sex, of love, she'd see these masks floating in the dark. It would never go away. _

_Suddenly, it was all too much. She yanked at her chains. She screamed "I'll kill you" at the top of her voice. __Long Nose came over and bent over her, the mask's misshapen appendage almost touching her face as he trailed a hand up her leg. She shivered. "How'd ye do that, little vorcha?" he said, and Big Grin laughed, struck an effeminate pose and mocked "Me kiiihlll you". It had, however, not been completely pointless as an act of defiance. She had tried to call on her telekinetic powers by willpower alone. She had failed. Too well were they trained to respond to the movements of her fingers and hands. But something else had happened. She felt a current running through her body, a power building up, pressing outward. It was like her skin would break._

_The biotic power euphemistically named __'warp' rarely manifested in humans. In order to protect its user from her own power, it required an even distribution of preferably even-sized eezo nodules throughout the nervous system of the biotic, something that rarely came about through random exposure. Its controlled application required a mental discipline not unlike Zen meditation, but unlike Zen monks, a combat biotic needed to call upon it in a split second. As opposed to the more obviously telekinetic abilities, 'warp' was not an optionally non-destructive power. In a spherical area, it would create millions of micro-singularities. Their gravity wells were measured in millimeters at their largest and they only existed for a nanosecond, but they were steep enough to result in huge gravity differentials. Any unprotected solid matter within their range would be ripped apart by tidal forces. The more powerful the biotic was, the more singularities she could create, and the smaller were the pieces left. Some asari matriarchs, it was rumored, could shatter molecules into their constituent atoms. The power, some said, should've been named for what it did: disintegration._

_Alexander De Morgan__ had left nothing to chance. His daughter had not been exposed to eezo as a fetus. Her nodules were implanted, in a grueling series of operations that had lasted several days, and taken her several weeks to recover from. There hadn't been any expense spared for her training, but the power had refused to manifest. Some blockage of the nervous current, the experts said; most likely, a mental flaw. It shouldn't have mattered anyway, for at the moment, Miranda's mental state was anything but meditative. But there was something else that could give the body what it needed without any input by the higher mental functions: the fight-or-flight reflex. _

_When there was danger, and no hope of either fight or flight, one of the possible responses was mental retreat. The brain refused to accept the reality of the situation.__ A moment ago, Miranda's situation had seemed hopeless. She didn't know herself well enough to know it was a matter of pride, but she would not retreat. Instead, as she felt her nervous system powering up, a sliver of hope presented itself to her. Maybe, just maybe, she could trigger something through the movements of her vocal cords. _

_Barred from flight by chains, barred from mental retreat by knowledge, __a primal aspect of her, something shared by all higher life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, routed everything she had into the need to kill her enemies. And with her body carefully engineered, she held within her so much more than any normal human, though it was but an infinitesimal part of the dark energy bound up in the structure of space itself. Again, she screamed her need into their mocking faces: "I'll kill you!" There was an explosion of blue light. Her chains, the bed frame and the mattress and a part of the floor and the wall, as well as the bandages and wires around her fingers, all of her clothing and almost all of her hair disintegrated into a cloud of very fine dust . As she felt herself falling, her combat training took over. She hit the floor in a rolling motion and came up into a kneeling position._

_Long Nose__ – not so long now as its tip was sheared off – stared incredulously at the stump of his arm. Big Grin was drawing his pistol. She made a throwing motion and sent him flying. With a sickening crunch, he hit the wall, leaving a broad track of blood when he slid down. Long Nose found himself facing a figure that could've stepped out of a myth: a savagely beautiful female clad in nothing but a cloud of dust, swirling around her in hypnotic patterns illuminated by blue light emanating from her skin. He turned to flee, but like the vengeful Erinyes of old, Miranda could see no reason to spare him. _

_With her voice roughened by __the dust, she growled "I told you I'll *KILL* you". In another explosion of blue light refracted through dust, the last of her keepers, together with the camera and a part of the table, disintegrated. _

_From now on, Miranda De Morgan could kill with a word._

_An orphaned table leg clattered to the ground. Then there was silence. _

_**-O0O-**_

Back in the present, Miranda was shaken by a series of silent sobs that refused to stop. _He had known_, it screamed in her head, _he set me up_. _Hesetmeuphesetmeup_, it went, over and over again. She had been sick after the killings. She had collapsed to the ground, with no energy left at all. She'd been unable to stand up for minutes, but she had also been proud. Killing these men had felt so ultimately, so completely right, like nothing she'd done in her life before. But she'd only done her father's will. Again. After he'd set her up to be raped. _Raped_!

She hadn't grown up sheltered from the world's more unpleasant truths. She knew what some parents did, and despised those who were so much the slaves of their passions they couldn't even spare their own children. But this deliberate and calculated setup was ...no, not incomprehensible. She understood the reasoning all too well. But it refused to connect with what a father would do to his children. They'd have finished it if she hadn't killed them! Or had there been someone in wait to save her if she couldn't do it? She'd destroyed the camera, but there must have been another one or Chang wouldn't have the recording. Her father, as impossible as that sounded, had watched it all. But even that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was this: that he had been right. That his plans had worked. That she now owed this power to him and his 'distasteful setup', as Kavanagh had put it.

Finally, she managed to collect herself. It occurred to her that she was in hostile territory, and had been in hostile territory all her life. She felt her fear peak and called on her trained discipline to control it. The office she was hiding in looked, smelled and felt like another world. The familiar CAE furnishings, the walls, the ground, they felt like wadding under her hands and feet, changed into something foreign. No, more than foreign: alien. It was her father's world, but not hers anymore. In a way, it was liberating. No need any more to feel guilty because she couldn't love her father, because she couldn't bring herself to care about the same things he did, because she didn't feel what she was supposed to feel. It all fell away. Her father was her enemy. It was so simple. Why hadn't it occurred to her before? What did soldiers do in hostile territory? She didn't know, but 'be careful' and 'pay attention' must feature prominently in their guidelines. She took a sequence of deep breaths. Control. _Thank you, 'father', for teaching me this_, she thought. _It won't go to waste_. In Chang's office, there had been silence after the recording had run its course, but now they were talking again.

"A most spectacular success," said Kavanagh thoughtfully. "But I don't have to tell you what will happen if even a hint of this gets out. And if you don't mind a personal remark: I don't know how you can bear watching this. I can't argue with your results, but I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it. The facts speak for themselves", answered her father. "There was no damage done to her, and she's manifested her power. As an added benefit, she gave these men what they deserved. Surely you won't question that. I have to admit I'm rather proud of her."

_Too late_, Miranda thought in her hiding place. _I've waited years for you to say these words. Now I don't care_.

"I should mention we switched back to the standard mechanisms in the training that followed," Chang interjected. "Impressive as that was, there is the emotional instability of puberty to be considered. There could've been unpleasant accidents not so easy to cover up."

"Without that instability, you likely wouldn't have gotten any results at all," said Kavanagh, "Did she ever repeat that feat?"

"Not to my knowledge. She's become difficult to monitor lately, but another incident wouldn't have escaped our notice."

"Difficult to monitor, is she?" said Kavanagh. "Just in case you choose to replace her – don't deny you're thinking about it – remember our agreement. If you don't want her, we want her, alive, sane and fully functional. You know our objectives. You won't be able to wriggle out of this with bribes."

"We'll see," answered her father curtly.

"We will indeed. Now, show me into the lab. Let's see this new generation you've made in person."

Miranda heard chairs moving and the door open. Using the data stream of the surveillance camera over the door to the lab section, she could now take a look. They were coming in her direction. Markovic lead the group, his graceful movements belying his appearance – he looked slightly overweight, which said something about his muscle mass at two meters height. After him a tall blonde woman – that must be Kavanagh – at the side of her father, tall, lithe and dark-haired, and in excellent physical condition. People thought he looked striking. Chang came last, a slim, dark-haired man of average height who could've come from anywhere on Earth. At the corner, no more than three meters from her hiding place, they turned left and continued to the double door that closed off the actual laboratories. The drone picked up a last exchange before they passed out of range.

"...curious. What would you have done, if she had failed to call on her power?"

Her father's voice sounded as unconcerned as ever as he answered. "There is always a price to pay for failure."

Miranda was not surprised. Not anymore.


	3. Operation Sunrise

Chapter 3: Operation Sunrise

"Good evening, Dr. Chang"

"Evening," Chang replied absentmindedly and continued his search around his office for a moment, before he realized he should be alone. Startled, he looked back over his shoulder for the unexpected company. Miranda was standing in the door, still clad in her business suit and apparently unarmed. _Appearances can be deceiving, Dr. Chang, as you should know better than most. _

"Ms. De Morgan? Is there anything I can help you with? Is it…."

Then he paled, as the significance of Miranda's presence dawned on him. After everyone had left for the labs, she'd taken the opportunity to browse the documents Chang had left in his office. Hurriedly she'd copied her project files from Chang's datapad onto an empty one, scanned some of the other stuff into her omnitool without reading it, and gone back into her hiding place. It wasn't long before the lab door opened and her father, his bodyguard and Kavanagh had stepped out, making straight for the elevator. After about a minute Chang had appeared as well, taking the turnoff to his office instead.

She'd pondered hard what to do. There was no doubt in her mind that she couldn't stay here – 'here' meaning her father's domain – a moment longer, but she had to see her sister first. She didn't feel particularly sure about confronting Chang, but she was done playing the mouse, forever hiding in the walls of her father's tower. She'd planned for her eventual escape for two years. Now that the time was upon her, it wasn't as she'd envisioned it. 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy' was a catchphrase she didn't believe in. _Good_ plans included contingencies and went without a hitch – _all right,_ she conceded, _at least without a major fuckup_. Now she had to improvise. She could only hope her preparations had been enough.

But first, there was something she needed to know. She had no idea how to intimidate someone, but Chang wouldn't respond to friendly persuasion, and she didn't feel confident acting the seductress, even if the very thought didn't make her want to puke. _Let's see if this stuff I've picked up from the movies is any good_. First, a little show of power.

Chang's datapad had dropped to the floor under his desk – maybe she'd swiped it off the chair when she'd hurried out. This presented her with an opportunity. A beckoning motion, accompanied by tiny blue flames like 's fire running over her fingers, was enough to make it fly into her hand.

"You wouldn't be looking for this?"

Chang stared at the incriminating datapad – or perhaps her fingers – and backed away a step, his eyes flickering over to a closet. Again, she had no idea of its contents. It didn't matter.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you, Dr. Chang. You should know by now how easy it is to lose a hand around me."

She'd tried to sound as unconcerned as her father. From the expression on Chang's face, she hadn't done too badly.

"Wh...what do you want?" he stammered.

She sauntered into the office as if she owned it, faking an indifference she didn't feel as she passed Chang without meeting his eyes. What she really wanted to do was point her gun at his head and keep the trigger down until she'd splattered the brain that had designed her 'trigger mechanism' all over the walls of this room. Instead, she let her gaze wander the office, as if having entered it for the first time. She looked down at the datapad. She'd already memorized the contents but pretended to study it now for better effect.

"'Application of physical and emotional pain'," she quoted. "'Elevated stress levels, similar to – see attached documentation – those diagnosed in war veterans', 'threat of personal violation'. All clinical euphemisms hiding the true nature of the 'event' rather than clarifying it, don't you think? Considering all this, I'm sure an intelligent man like you can imagine... what I want."

"I was doing my job," Chang replied more firmly. "It was nothing personal."

The pistol was out almost before Miranda realized it herself. Chang backed away, but she followed him, keeping her weapon trained on his forehead until he reached the window.

"Nothing personal?" she hissed, "I can tell you it was pretty personal for me. Perhaps you'd better think on that in future. If you have one. Fortunately for you, I'm not here for revenge. I'm here for information."

"You'll... let me go if I answer?"

"No promises. Let's say there might be a chance." In fact, she had no idea what to do with him if he did answer. Intimidating Chang seemed to work, but if she let him go, he'd trigger the alarm. _Let's see how it goes first_.

"What do you want to know?"

"Where are my older sisters?" she asked without breaking eye contact, keeping the pistol leveled at his face.

"I...I don't know. Really. He never told me."

He was lying, she was sure of it. Perhaps he feared her father too much. _Let's give him something else to fear._

"Do you have a daughter, Dr. Chang?" she asked. "No, you needn't answer, I know you do. You know, I'm leaving this place. No cameras and bugs to track me anymore, isn't that inconvenient? You'll never know where I might be hiding. You wouldn't want to wake up one day and find your daughter missing, possibly finding herself in the same scenario you so diligently designed for me..."

"There'd be no point to it. She's not a biotic."

Miranda frowned. Didn't he understand her threat? Or would he really do this to his own daughter if she was a biotic? She wished her biotic abilities enabled her to read minds, then there'd be no need for this. _Let's bring it home to him what this is about._

"Well...", she said, using the image of squashing a bug to give her voice the necessary callousness. "That's too bad for her, then, don't you think?"

His adam's apple moved up and down. Apparently that had hit home.

"Where. Are. My. Sisters? I won't ask again."

"They're... in an asylum." The panic showed in his eyes as they flickered around the office as if looking for an escape. _Just as I had_, Miranda thought. "Somewhere in the Ural Mountains. I don't know where, but he owns it. That's all, I swear. He's keeping the information in the data vault, I never saw the details. You won't do anything to my daughter, will you?"

_Damn it._ The data vault was an isolated system keyed to her father's biometric data. She didn't even know what exactly. DNA, fingerprints, retina patterns, facial configuration. Probably all of that. Getting in would be time-consuming, and one more day in this tower would be too much. It also required physical access. Once she was on the run, she could forget about it. Perhaps she'd be able to find the location on her own. There couldn't be many asylums owned by CAE in the Ural Mountains.

As for Chang, there was no doubt in her mind he deserved death. If she wanted to spare him, she could bind and gag him and put him in one of closets to be found once she'd be gone. Half a dozen other scenarios went through her head in the few seconds she considered. In the end, the decision was easy. She met his fearful gaze for one last time. Then she pulled the trigger.

The shot resonated like thunder in her ears. Chang fell to the floor, a trickle of blood flowing out of the gunshot wound. Miranda took a deep breath. She was committed now. There'd be no going back. _Of course I won't do anything to your daughter. But you didn't deserve to know that._

+O0O+

Thoughts and emotions, mixed into an indecipherable maelstrom, went through Miranda's head as she made her way to the labs where they'd put her sister. Had she really killed someone in cold blood? Why had she killed him? Wouldn't it have been better to leave him alive? Had it been just revenge or to protect any future sisters her father might make after her departure? Had she wanted to close off any way back in case of second thoughts? She thought of Chang's daughter, a girl of fourteen, like she'd been. Would she be better off without her father? How could you feel both guilty and relieved at the same time after having killed someone?

No point in brooding on it, she thought. Perhaps this was why people found it easier to just stick to "You don't kill people". Trying to weigh the consequences, second-guessing yourself, what you were thinking and feeling, what ultimately pushed you into making your decision – you could go insane as you tried to follow an infinite, ever-expanding tree of possibilities. Having enhanced mental acuity only made it worse. Yet in the end it didn't matter. Once you lost the delusion the world was simple, all that was left to you was to navigate the web of reasons, causes and consequences to the best of your ability.

She'd reached the actual labs. They weren't exactly suitable for keeping a small child. There were rows of tables with lab equipment of every imaginable kind, various chromatography systems, microscopes, shelves with literature and reference books, rows of test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks, cupboards with chemicals, centrifuges, liquid nitrogen freezers, deactivated holoscreens and so on. At any other time she'd have been very curious about what they did here, but now only finding her sister mattered.

Near the back of the area, one room was different. Someone had attempted to make it look pleasing to the eyes. The walls were covered with pale green wallpaper, and there was an picture of a sunset over the sea hanging on one wall. There was a crib near the far wall, painted in bright red, blue and yellow and surrounded by medical diagnostics equipment. An inactive humanoid mech was standing a few steps off. There was no sign of any caretaker, but a small microphone was fastened to the crib's frame.

Miranda turned off the microphone and looked into the crib.

Her sister looked ordinary. A small girl of eight months, or so the file said, with a patch of dark hair on her head. She was sleeping peacefully, her breathing slow and regular. Miranda couldn't suppress a giggle at the thought she'd 'expected someone taller', as the famous quote went. Instead, the tiny hands and feet looked unexpectedly vulnerable. She'd expected to feel resentment at the sight of the one made to replace her, but there was none of that. This was her sister. Often she'd imagined having a sister of her own age, someone she could talk to and trust implicitly. At this moment, the difference didn't matter. This little one was made to live the same life she'd lived, imprisoned in this tower by her father, never knowing that he was her enemy. There was a sudden surge of...empathy? Love? Protectiveness? Maybe a bit of everything.

Oriana, she thought. _My sister._ Auriana, the golden one – wasn't that the name the ancient Romans had given their goddess of the dawn? _No, that was Aurora_. But the picture refused to budge. At that moment, the child turned its head. A burp escaped its mouth. Then it opened its eyes. Big blue eyes, just like hers. Seeing Miranda, it...she...greeted her with a gurgle. Miranda couldn't help but smile. She'd never cared for small children. They couldn't talk and had needs she didn't understand, apart from eating and sleeping. She wasn't sure she understood her sister's needs either, but seeing her was – she mentally berated herself for the cheesy metaphor even as she thought it – like watching the sunrise her name was surely meant to evoke.

Miranda's thoughts raced. She'd been planning her own escape for more than a year, and that she'd have to set it in motion earlier than planned was unfortunate but not fatal anymore at this stage. Her sister, however, was a complication. Small children didn't adhere to plans and didn't follow orders. She brought up the layout of the tower in her mind, checking the different ways to get in and out. She could come back later and get her sister out with a better-laid plan. Any plan was better than improvisation, but her father would upgrade the security and cancel her clearance and systems access once she was gone.

She looked down at her sister again. _No._ _He will not have you_. A plan took shape in her mind. It would be dangerous, most notably a risk for Oriana, and a jump into unknown waters for herself, but much better than leaving her sister with her father. _Wouldn't anything be_, she thought sarcastically.

"I'll be back," she told Oriana softly. "I promise." Then she turned to set her plan in motion, leaving her sister in the company of the mech for now. As she left the room, she took one of the gas masks they kept here for emergencies. As far as she was concerned, the situation qualified.

+O0O+

Her quarters greeted her with darkness and silence. Only the moonlight made the walls and furnishings visible. She let her eyes wander over the familiar outlines. This would be her last night in what had, despite everything, been her home. It looked like the safe haven a home was supposed to be. With the penthouse located at the corner of the tower, both the big lounge and her office cum study had completely transparent walls on one side. Often, there was nothing but clouds and sky to see outside, giving life up here an unreal, dream-like atmosphere, as removed from the Earth as her father's ambitions.

Sometimes she'd wondered if this life would turn out to be a dream, if this 'cloud-capped tower' she was living in would some day reveal itself to be an illusion and dissolve into thin air like the towers in Shakespeare's play. _Her_ father would never relinquish his powers, that was for sure, and unlike the original Miranda, she'd grab them from him if she could. Her namesake had been naïve and idealistic, and for all her courage she'd fought with the means her culture would allow her. She'd not make that mistake; she couldn't afford to with her father as her enemy. Strange, however, that the classics and the even older mythology therein could echo the present so well, with her having powers and abilities which would seem magical to those who didn't know better.

Enough of that. There was work to be done. She went over to her computer and called up its holoscreen. A jumble of symbols and virtual screens and boxes appeared. There'd be a lot of going up and down the tower this night, but that couldn't be helped. She had the best systems access from her office, and this needed to work perfectly.

A blinking symbol in the holoscreen informed her she had a new mail message. Noting the sender – someone named 'youknowwho' on a node named 'anonymizer217693' , followed by a sequence of characters indicating Omega as its origin. She was about to delete it when she noticed the subject line – two words no content recognizer would find suspicious, but as obvious as an explosion to her:

"Distasteful setup".

Instinctively she looked back over her shoulder. _Stupid_. Fighting panic, she realized if her father had found out, the security would already be here – and the knockout gas she'd brought the gas mask to safeguard against would already be emitting from the jets in the ceiling.

Someone had heard the phrase "distasteful setup" being spoken, discovered her presence, not told her father – probably not – and sent her a message. There weren't many scenarios that fit this evidence. Blackmail would be the best fit. Or it could be from Kavanagh, who had an interest in her. Anyway, she was good enough to catch any intrusion attempt, and this was something she couldn't ignore. She set up additional anti-intrusion measures and opened the message. No text, only an encrypted file asking for a password. There was no hint to the password, but it couldn't be a word or a name. The security monitoring her mail would've hacked that in seconds. It must be something she and the sender would know, and each knew the other to know. That ruled blackmail by an unknown observer out. Almost.

Kavanagh would be most likely to send her a secret message. Her organization wanted her. She had seen... Miranda took out Chang's datapad and started a search for anything not a word or a name. A few items came up, but one immediately got her attention:

DM3F-2150.9723!BT4-Miranda

"Her" project ID. She entered it into the password prompt. A picture appeared. It showed a logo she'd seen somewhere – yes, the University of Tasmania in Hobart – and very faint writing that would likely pass a script detector and confuse even standard-issue surveillance cameras. It was an attendance card for a conference on xenobiology, and said:

Katherine Kavanagh, DSc  
Origins Institute  
Nos Astra Free University, Illium

She memorized the contents and closed the message. As she'd suspected, the package immediately proceeded to delete itself. Looking up the latest news in xenobiology, she found the conference was presently in session at the Hotel Grand Imperial in Hobart and would end on the twenty-second. Should she take this invitation? Trusting Kavanagh might be a bad idea – if she'd known about her presence she might have said everything for her benefit. On the other hand, having an ally would be invaluable. She'd never thought the chance would present itself, and if it was a trap, that hotel wasn't an easy place to kidnap someone. It couldn't hurt to talk to her, and having her address removed a possible kink in her plan. She safe-deleted the now empty message and went back to her preparations.

Use of her executive overrides would be logged where she couldn't erase them, but the logs were only analyzed at need. If this went right, she'd be gone by the time the security recognized the need. The time for caution was past, now she used her overrides in a way she'd have considered reckless only a few hours before. She called up her infiltrator programs, others to hide the infiltrators, mislead security and cover her tracks, and to shield everything from the VI's attention. All of the electronic resources she'd collected in two years, all the programs she'd taken over, the traps and the bugs she'd set became active, serving her and her sister's escape. Some would be impossible to hide for long, but for now all of them should remain undetected by CAE security.

The only thing she left alone was the backdoor virus she'd embedded deep into the network's substructure, its primary copy hidden in a specialized piece of espionage hardware she'd stolen from CAE's prototype labs. She smiled at the memory. One of her greatest achievements – not that anyone would ever know of it. She'd modified the research data to make it appear as if the research was flawed. The prototype was considered unfeasible by the research team, and no one paid much attention when it vanished. She owned the only one in existence.

About half an hour later she sat back, satisfied. Some of her electronic tentacles were still tunneling through the tower's information infrastructure in preparation for stage two of her escape plan, but for now she only needed to infiltrate the logistics and storage departments. CAE Tower wasn't a production site, but the labs needed resources, and a lot of technical equipment went in and out, always carefully screened. No screening system was perfect though, and it could leak like a sieve if an executive-level insider wanted it to.

Now for the legwork. Down the tower again to pick up the things she'd ordered from storage. A portable cryostasis chamber shaped vaguely like a coffin, a radiothermal power generator the size of a small suitcase to power it, and an an anti-grav sled to move everything over to the only freight elevator with access to the biolabs. The elevator was heavily monitored, and she needed her override once again. Down to the biolabs. She picked up the crib wherein her sister was still sleeping peacefully and pushed it into the cryostasis camber. The RTG followed. She connected it and opened the chamber's control panel. Six weeks should be enough. If she hadn't recovered it by then things would've gone so horribly wrong that planning for the eventuality was a waste of time.

After a last look at her sleeping sister, she set the activation sequence to start in ten seconds and closed the lid. It wasn't the safest procedure – cryostasis hadn't been extensively tested with children – but the box was the best chance to get Oriana out, and its trail would be more easily confused than one of a teenager carrying a child. Oriana wouldn't survive what she had in mind for herself anyway.

Logistics was next. Resources such as food and other materials needed to keep a building like CAE Tower operational were coming in night and day, so logistics was never entirely abandoned like the labs, but out-processing was mostly automated. Taking the freight elevator again, she and her package went up to logistics, located on the ground floor for convenience. She'd prepared the "paperwork" – people still used that term, even if it had all been electronic for at least a century – for her package beforehand. It would send the box on a convoluted path through space for five weeks. Now she entered Kavanagh's Illium address as the final destination and pushed the box out onto the freight-processing belt.

With the box itself out of her hands, she hurried up to her rooms again. Her computer had used her overrides to infiltrate logistics security, so she could now monitor it and ensure the box would pass all the scans and avoid those scans that would harm a living organism.

After a harrowing two hours of following her package through out-processing, paying constant attention to diverting security scans, forging in-house documentation, making sure her sister wasn't either detected or harmed, and deleting the electronic trail as soon as it was feasible, she was done. Her sister was out of the tower. Now she had to take care of herself.

+O0O+

"Miri?"

"Niket," she answered. "Over here".

In the dimly lit hall, she'd look like a shadow stepping out of the walls to him. Around her, the soft humming of fusion power generators suggested that everything was running perfectly in CAE Tower. Which it was. For now.

Niket stepped out from behind one of the gargantuan cylinders housing the reactor cores. It wasn't dangerous in here. All radiation was safely contained in the cores. People tended to avoid them anyway, being concerned about accidents and uneasy with the knowledge that the temperatures inside exceeded those of the sun's interior by an order of magnitude. Which is why she'd selected this hall as one of their meeting places.

It was impossible for her to move around outside the tower and remain unobserved, but she could get Niket into the tower without too much effort. She'd pinged him their number for this place – they'd set up a set of numbered meeting places in the past – and now here they were.

Coming face to face with him, his face obscured by the low lighting, she suddenly didn't know what to say to him anymore. Like always, there was this tension between them, and she wished – oh, how she wished for it – that she could follow where it pulled her and forget everything in his embrace. No more. Perhaps not ever again.

"What is it, Miri?"

He sounded concerned. He'd always been able to tell if something was wrong. She couldn't deceive him, or maybe she didn't care to. Even so, her voice came out cool and detached.

"Niket. I'm leaving." She moved her hands forward to touch his, felt their familiar warmth as he softly pressed her fingers, never demanding, but letting her know, in his subtle way without words, that there would be more if she wanted. She'd never wanted it more than now, and could never afford it less. She felt like she was being torn to pieces. Tears were running down her face, and she noticed she didn't care. She stepped forward and let herself collapse into his waiting embrace.

To his credit, he did nothing but hold her until she was done. Embarrassed, she took a step back. She was better than this, breaking down like one of those insufferably emotional women in cheap romance stories. It didn't change anything and didn't lessen the pain, but it had made her feel better.

"You'd better tell me," he finally said, his voice carrying a hint of amusement. He was right, damn it – here she was, usually so proud of her hard-won composure, having a teary-eyed breakdown at a secret meeting of almost-lovers in, of all things, a hall full of fusion reactors. Damn it, who was he to make her smile in a situation like this. Even more embarrassed, she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up to face him again. Better make it short.

"My abduction was a setup," she said. Her voice was still hoarse from crying, but her composure had returned. "My father did it to trigger more of my powers."

He was silent for some time, just watching her. Was there any appropriate reaction to such a revelation? There weren't any words to do it justice.

"How do you know?" he asked.

She took a data-pad out and offered it to him. "You might want to have a look. Brace yourself, it isn't pleasant."

She'd never told him exactly what had happened on that day, only that she'd killed her kidnappers before they could go through with their plans. She'd be gone soon, but someone else had to know. Who better but the only human she trusted with her secrets, though it was almost too personal to share it, even with him.

He let the recording run. Silently, thankfully.

"He let you go through this, watching while it happened?" he asked incredulously. "What kind of man is your father?"

"Now you know," she answered quietly.

He hesitated before continuing. "Will you...kill him?"

"Too risky for now. His bodyguards have kinetic shields, I don't know if I'd get through. One mistake, and I'm dead, or worse."

He waited.

"He'll put me in an asylum if I get too rebellious. There's nothing about that in what I've given you, but I have evidence." She didn't tell him about her sisters. Not the twins, and not Oriana. He couldn't tell what he didn't know.

"This copy is only for you," she continued. "So you know why I'm leaving. Don't talk about it to anyone. My father has too many important people in his pockets. Going to the law with this will achieve nothing." Even more than that, she didn't want this to go public. It was too personal. But she didn't say that. "There's also a little gift I've prepared for you. I don't want that other stuff to be how you remember me. You'll find it among the...other stuff."

He took the datapad and turned it about in his hand. "I...understand. But where will you go? You're not prepared for a life on the run. Is there...anything I could help you with? Do you have anyone you can depend on out there?"

It was one of her greatest fears, that she'd prove unable to cope with a life with no home, always on the run. Thinking about it made her quarters seem almost like a sanctuary. On the other hand, seeing the galaxy, or that small but still indescribably huge part known to humans and the species they were so uneasily allied to, all on her own, that must be exhilarating.

"I'll have to leave Earth and hope the galaxy is big enough. And no, and no. I don't want you involved. You'll have to face an interrogation by the security anyway. If they suspected you knew anything they'd torture you. I'll have to go on my own." She didn't mention that there was a chance for an ally. Better he didn't even know there was something to know.

"So...this is it," he asked pensively, "our...farewell?"

"You sound as if you expected it."

He nodded sadly. "I always knew you weren't for me," he said. "I'd never be able to keep up with you, and before long we'd hate each other. I've always wondered what you found in me. Only the cause is unexpected."

It was her turn to be amused. It was so like him, seeing one part of the obvious while being blind to the other. "Don't belittle yourself," she answered. "You saved me. Without you, I'd be nothing more than my father's tool – or insane."

He smiled wistfully. "I'm not sure I believe that, but...thank you. We had some good times together. I wouldn't miss them for the world."

"Not for the world," she whispered.

After a few seconds of silence, she continued: "And thank you, too. Would you mind if I stayed in touch?"

"Why would I ever mind?"

"Because you'd be my spy in my father's home. I have a few electronic ones as well, but...someday I'll come back and make him pay. And then it would be good to have an ally."

He laughed. "That's what I've always liked in you, Miri. You never give up, you always have plans. Of course I'll help you. I would've done so anyway, but I never forgot what you did for my mother. No, don't deny it, I know you too well."

The tears threatened again. This time, she fought them back successfully. Niket would remain her friend and her ally. A load she hadn't known existed fell from her mind. She grabbed him in a last hug. Then it was time to go.

"Goodbye, Niket. We'll see each other again," she said, and continued in a lighter mood, "it may be some time, though. Don't forget the codes."

"Goodbye, Miri," he said. He stepped back, taking her in as if to make sure he wouldn't forget her.

"Give 'em hell," he added.

She turned and walked away, taking a last look at him over her shoulder. His mouth moved, and the echoes of two more whispered syllables hung in the air, but were lost in the hum of the power generators before she could understand them.

+O0O+

She woke up from an unexpectedly dreamless sleep into a morning showing the first promise of sunrise. Her clock showed 0645. Quickly she got up, took a shower and ate a quick but nourishing breakfast. For her last outing from this tower - or her first true outing, as she'd rather think of it - she put on a dark close-fitting two-piece outfit she'd prepared especially for this occasion. Its main advantage was that it was suitable for diving while not looking outlandish when walking on land.

As she looked around and thought about what to put into the small backpack, she was astonished to notice how much stuff she had she hated to leave behind. Even if all of it was paid for by her father, some items had become hers in a way no money could pay for. That really beautiful evening dress he'd given her earlier this year when he wanted her to impress a business partner's son. The boy had come to fear her for no reason she could make out, but the dress had stayed and wasn't less beautiful for it. The mechanical pendulum clock that didn't only show the time but served as an anchor for her meditations. She'd learned to control her telekinetic powers with it, and – wonder of wonders – hadn't destroyed it in the process. The beautiful desk she'd spent countless hours with, an elegant old-fashioned piece made from rosewood showing a fine grain that caught the eye. Here she'd studied everything thrown at her and then some, planned her 'operations', infiltrated her father's systems. It was almost a part of her.

What she didn't have – and this would surprise the rumor-mongers in the media as well as the other high society girls who envied her to no end – was a big dressing-table with a make-up collection big enough to brag about. She didn't need one. It was enough to keep clean and comb her hair, and she'd be the showpiece of almost any event. Now both circumstances worked against her. Not only would she be conspicuous, but she owned nothing to disguise herself with and even worse, she didn't have the faintest idea how to use all that stuff once she acquired it. Of most items she didn't even know the names. Another skill she needed to learn fast.

After she finished packing, she sat down at her desk, running her hand across its varnished surface as if caressing it. Its beauty wasn't its only appreciable feature, but the sheer genius of its design. Everything technical was so well hidden that at a glance nobody would ever suspect this was the workplace of a hacker of exceptional skill. Exceptional beauty paired with outstanding usefulness. She'd feel its loss keenly. After today, she'd never again put her hands on it. Never again, like so much else. Time to get to work.

+O0O+

As a rule, the VI controlling CAE's in-house security network was very effective at detecting intruders. Which is why the network had only one main console to be watched over by a human supervisor, instead of the ten or twenty required for a similar VI-less setup. The supervisor rarely had anything to do, which is why he was dozing in front of the console, with half of his last meal – a plate of pastries and a glass filled with a dark brown liquid – left uneaten on his desk.

There was a miniscule change deep within the apparent chaos typical for a haptic-interface holoscreen. The console pinged. The supervisor jumped from his seat, his arms imitating a windmill as he tried to find his balance, thereby swiping the glass from the desk and splattering sticky liquid all over the desk and his pants.

"Shit," he cursed.

"Hey Mart," came a female voice over the commlink. "Something unexpected happening in your wet dreams?"

"Shut up, Kaira", 'Mart' – systems security specialist Martin Lanick – answered as he glimpsed in the direction of the offending console, where one of several dozen status indicators had gone from green to red. "One bogie in two years, and it has to happen on my watch."

"Why are you complaining,, then?" answered the voice. "You've got two year's pay for doing nothing. And it's 'Kah-eera', not 'Kayra'."

But Lanick had more important things to pay attention to. The console showed the ID of the attacked node. He took a deep breath.

"Tracer, Kaira. Someone's hitting the boss's node. The VI didn't react."

The sound of something toppling – likely a chair – came through the commlink as his colleague Kaira Anand went into siege mode.

"Tracer on. Wait...did you say the VI didn't react? Guess what – the attack came _from_ the VI!"

"You're kidding me. Our own VI attacking the boss's systems?"

"Go up and look for yourself if you don't believe me. The trail ends there. Someone's compromised our VI."

"We'll restart it. Go get the emergency codes. Hurry."

Both opened the drawers with the emergency instructions. The two passcodes for restarting the VI had to be entered within ten seconds or the general alarm would go off.

Ten seconds went by. The console showed a barrage of messages as it restarted CAE security's main VI. All outgoing and incoming electronic communication lines were cut during the restart, and a secondary system monitored the process, but it was less powerful than the VI itself. For about five hundred milliseconds, several systems within the network had a tiny security leak. This leak was known to the security operators, but considered inconsequential. Too narrow was the set of conditions to be met for an attack.

Which is why, after the VI came up again, the console showed nine red status indicators instead of one. The secondary system traced them all to one location: Miranda De Morgan's penthouse.

"I can't believe this," said Anand incredulously. "She's trying to take over the system. Isolating the VI."

"We have to call the boss," Lanick said. For a few long moments, there was no answer from Anand. They both knew if this wasn't important with a capital "I" they'd lose their jobs. On the other hand, only a handful of people had the authority to give orders concerning the boss's daughter, and most of them would only pass something big like this on and take the credit.

"Do it," said Anand. "I'll contact the Patrol." CAE Patrol was the enforcement arm of CAE Security. Things were going to get serious.

+O0O+

Pulling her hands out of the holoscreen, Miranda sat back and took a deep breath – and almost choked on it as something occurred to her. Eyeing the ceiling suspiciously, she picked up her gas mask and put it on. The backpack was next.

The holoscreen showed the progress of events in the tower and its network, including real-time video transmissions where she'd taken over the cameras. She could've done more damage to the VI, but that hadn't been her intent. Things had to appear repairable, if barely, and connected to her. The attack on the VI had to be dangerous enough to avoid any suspicion that it might be a diversion, but the real attack wasn't aimed at the VI at all but at external security. That was something she couldn't have done without being obvious in some way. She'd had to hide it under something even more obvious.

"Miranda? Stop this immediately, " Alexander De Morgan's voice came out of her commlink.

How should she answer him? As soon as someone discovered Chang, he'd know what had triggered this. He'd suspect she'd seen Kavanagh and would send people to contact her – or worse, given the way they parted. So far, he didn't know Kavanagh had contacted her. Every minute she could keep him in the dark about her plans was crucial, so she opted for the simple answer:

"No."

"You know you can't escape the consequences," her father went on. "Why are you doing this anyway? This is not a game."

She eyed the ceiling again. No way to tell if they'd activated the jets.

"No," she said loudly. "It is not a game." Outside the doors to her penthouse, three security guards were preparing a forced entry. Time to go.

A finger pressed a virtual button in the holoscreen, making her systems execute the last chain of commands she'd set up, cutting primary and secondary power to the grounds' automated security and setting off the virus to scramble CAE's satellite links. As the main doors splintered, she focused, her hand reached out as if to push something away, only with her fingers slightly closed over nothing. The familiar blue fire ran along her arm. The transparent wall separating her office from the sky flashed in a blindingly bright blue.

A crack appeared in the wall. It didn't break. _Shit_.

"If you give up now, all this will be yours one day, did you ever think of that?"

The security guards made careful but determined progress along her hallway. _As if I were a dangerous criminal_. It was even true, though they didn't know it yet. She pulled her pistol.

"This is beyond bribes, 'father'," she answered. "I've always hated you. Do you know how liberating it is to admit that at last?"

She pulled her pistol. As a shadow appeared in the archway leading to the hallway, she fired a warning shot. The shadow vanished.

"Hate fuels ambition. Hold on to it. But it serves no purpose if you don't keep control of yourself. Stop this now."

No time left. _I should've brought a grenade_. Focusing again, she sent another wave of space-warping micro-singularities in the direction of the wall. The flash sent shards flying in every direction as the material shattered. A blast of wind made her stagger as a circular opening appeared. Another shadow scurried across the archway. She fired another shot in its direction. Someone cursed. An object came flying through the archway. She answered with a burst of bullets as she retreated onto the ledge. The object exploded with a small puff, and smoke began to obscure her vision. _Too late_.

"It may have escaped your notice, father," she answered him, "that I _am_ in control. Me. Not you."

At a command from her omnitool, her electronic systems overloaded, sending a cloud of sparks over the beautiful rosewood surface. _Goodbye_. Then she closed the commlink and jumped.

The wind pulled at her clothing as she fell, and she felt her hair streaming upwards. Breathing became difficult in the low pressure created by the headwind, and her brain, feeling itself falling, flooded her bloodstream with adrenaline. It was difficult to focus.

The most basic function of biotic powers was to affect mass, and the behavior of any object with mass, limited only by the energy the biotic had learned to control. In some way, all biotic powers known to science could be attributed to the so-called "mass effect". A biotic didn't need herself as an anchor, any object would do, else every biotic would be affected by a counterforce as she applied her power. This meant there was no reason why a biotic shouldn't be able to affect her own mass, or apply a pulling or pushing force to herself.

Miranda had always wondered why nobody else had thought of it, with both human history and human mythology being full of dreams of flying. Not that she could fly, but she'd researched asari sources and experimented with her own mind, and found how to reduce her mass and push herself away from other objects. Now, as never before, her life depended on it.

She recalled her meditation exercises, her combat training, wherein her instructor taught her to remain attentive and focused in the face of fear. The strike of her old clock echoed in her mind as she pushed out both hands along her body as if trying to push the fast approaching ground away from her.

Her descent began to slow, first from the headwind affecting her lowered mass, then from the push she was applying to herself. _More_. Brilliant blue fire flickered across her body. _Why is this always so damned obvious?_ She felt her energy leaving her as if she were in an Olympian sprint. _More_. She saw the ground approaching.

She hit with a rolling motion. The ground gave her a dizzying jolt. Pain spread through her arm as it got caught between her body and the ground. _Shit_. Then she came to rest.

For a few moments she was unable to do anything but lie still. There were no sounds except the wind in the trees. The rising sun cast their long shadows across the grounds. Nothing seemed out of order. She tried to get up. Moving her arm was painful, but it didn't appear broken. Every part of her body was working as it should, except that she was still dizzy. There was a painful pressure in her ears after having fallen two kilometers in less than a minute. After shaking her head and opening and closing her mouth a few times, it vanished in an almost audible pop.

No guards were in sight, and no gun turrets rose from the ground. Trying to ignore the increasing demand of her body for energy, she hurried in the direction of the marina where a set of diving equipment was waiting for her. Neither guards nor cameras observed her departure. Only some of the spying nano-machines caught flickers of blue fire and the outline of a figure walking the grounds, and stepping into the waters of the Indian Ocean.


End file.
